Errol Morris: David Lean Lecture 2011

20 December 11

Watch the Tabloid and Thin Blue Line director deliver the 2011 David Lean Lecture on BAFTA Guru.

_{Both the 30 minute Errol Morris lecture
video and interview with Adam Curtis
are available to watch now on BAFTA Guru.}

On 6 November 2011, Errol Morris (The Fog Of War, Tabloid) delivered the 2011 David Lean Lecture, the Academy's prestigious annual film event.

Documentary filmmaker Morris has won acclaim for combining journalism with dramatic recreation, confessional interview and a deft grasp of cinematic style. His 1988 film The Thin Blue Line, which investigated the dubious death sentence given to its subject Randall Adams, is credited as the first film that solved a murder case.

The video of the lecture - available to watch on BAFTA Guru - features the self-described 'contrarian' challenging the idea of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking, and using clips of his own films to illustrate his investigative technique. A seperate video contains the Q&A session hosted immediately afterwards by UK documentarian Adam Curtis (All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace).

You search for truth by investigating endlessly - and if you're lucky, you find something approximating it.

In the year in which the Academy announced the introduction of a new Documentary category at the 2012 Film Awards, Morris was a natural fit for its annual film lecture. Nik Powell, Film Committee Chairman, said "Errol is director not bound by easy designations; he uses many of the tools in the fiction filmmaker’s stylistic repertoire to tell great stories. And like all great storytellers, he is a profoundly keen observer of human behaviours."